Take it to trial, and insist on a jury.Explain very carefully in opening and closing arguments about the civic virtue of non-violent protest, speak lovingly of the 1st Amendment, point out the utter ridiculousness of the claimed "damage" that cost $6000 to fix.

Let the jury decide if writing on the sidewalk with chalk purchsed from the toy department os a store is worth more prison time than rape or kidnapping.

mattharvest:He describes his own actions as an attempt to hurt the bank. Again, I'm not agreeing with the discretionary choice to prosecute him, but he fits the standards of the statute.

TFA:"I was encouraging folks to close their accounts at big Wall Street banks to transfer their money local nonprofit, community credit unions,"

I'm really having a problem with this idea that encouraging people to use an alternate service provider is "hurting" a multinational corporation. Maybe if people started listening to Olson it might reduce corporate revenue but lets not pretend that anyone is being physically harmed here.

His action was done with the sole intent of hurting Bank of America. By the very definition of the term it was an act of malice.

Today I learned that attempting to reduce a corporation's profits by advocating that consumers use an alternate service provider is "hurting" that corporation. I guess Mitt was right: corporations are people too.

Long story short. When I was 12 a friend and I were caught tagging the side of the school with the chalk. A police officer saw us and "arrested" us. Our parents were called and we had to clean it up. No real arrest and no BS over chalk on the school. however....

Joke was on them. Our parents thought it was clever and perhaps a little cruel to have us use a very small brillo pad and tooth brush to clean off our naughty language. My friend and I looked at each other as there wasn't much to start with and we realized very early that super cleaning only 1 part of a building results in only one thing. Orders are orders and if parents and a police officer are that damn stupid... well they just became part of the prank. I whispered this fact to my friend and we continued to vigorously scrub. Afterwords our art was now engraved into the brick of the school and our parents failed to realize this. Our artwork was visible for a few years until somebody felt it was worth preserving and gave it an upgrade with real spray paint.

The right thing would have been to just have us hose it down, but our parents thought it would be a better idea to get creative with the solution. It backfired and it was awesome.

Monkeyhouse Zendo:mattharvest: He describes his own actions as an attempt to hurt the bank. Again, I'm not agreeing with the discretionary choice to prosecute him, but he fits the standards of the statute.

TFA:"I was encouraging folks to close their accounts at big Wall Street banks to transfer their money local nonprofit, community credit unions,"

I'm really having a problem with this idea that encouraging people to use an alternate service provider is "hurting" a multinational corporation. Maybe if people started listening to Olson it might reduce corporate revenue but lets not pretend that anyone is being physically harmed here.

Don't do a false equivalency: maliciousness doesn't require physical harm, but rather just harm. If you intend to harm someone's business, that's maliciousness (that's why we have a tort for interfering with someone's business). Moreover, the nature and content of his behavior indicate it was intended to harm them. Not physically injure anyone, but definitely to harm.

The 'winning' issue here is that this is simply silly, not that he doesn't fit the statute.

mgshamster:Concerning his intent, the article is very light on details.

I do concede that point, but I did find an article that stated that at least initially he was simply writing "stop big banks".

Look, I don't this guy deserves 13 years (and highly doubt he gets any jail time tbh) but I do think that he did actually break the law as the statute listed above reads. Maybe the statute should be changed, maybe the guy has a point, but that doesn't mean he didn't break the law.

TonyDanza:Monkeyhouse Zendo: Today I learned that attempting to reduce a corporation's profits by advocating that consumers use an alternate service provider is "hurting" that corporation. I guess Mitt was right: corporations are people too.

Today you learned that a corporation is made up of people? What did you think they were previously?

Holy shiat you are retarded; intentionally or not doesn't matter. I doubt you will ever offer anything resembling meaningful commentary.

TonyDanza:mgshamster: Concerning his intent, the article is very light on details.

I do concede that point, but I did find an article that stated that at least initially he was simply writing "stop big banks".

Look, I don't this guy deserves 13 years (and highly doubt he gets any jail time tbh) but I do think that he did actually break the law as the statute listed above reads. Maybe the statute should be changed, maybe the guy has a point, but that doesn't mean he didn't break the law.

I found an article that said he was writing "stop bank blight . com" but I couldn't find that website. It doesn't seem to exist (or perhaps, doesn't exist anymore...)

TonyDanza:Monkeyhouse Zendo: lets not pretend that anyone is being physically harmed here.

If you think physical damage is the only way something or someone can be "hurt" then we are done discussing this, or for that matter, any issue.

Sloppy writing is an indication of sloppy thinking. Maybe you mean "damage" rather than "hurt"?

Hurt has as its primary definition the infliction of physical pain associated with injury and is generally used in reference to living things since they're the ones that can feel pain. Damage, on the other hand, is generally used in reference to inanimate objects and doesn't include the connotation of causing physical pain.

My point is that you're anthropomorphizing a business entity in an attempt to invoke an emotional response associated with the word "hurt". So yeah, I see what you're doing there.

If you think physical damage is the only way something or someone can be "hurt" then we are done discussing this, or for that matter, any issue.

Sloppy writing is an indication of sloppy thinking. Maybe you mean "damage" rather than "hurt"?

Hurt has as its primary definition the infliction of physical pain associated with injury and is generally used in reference to living things since they're the ones that can feel pain. Damage, on the other hand, is generally used in reference to inanimate objects and doesn't include the connotation of causing physical pain.

My point is that you're anthropomorphizing a business entity in an attempt to invoke an emotional response associated with the word "hurt". So yeah, I see what you're doing there.

That's probably why he put "hurt" in quotes. By all means though keep using semantics to argue against him though.

I read a story once about an artist who did conceptual 'graffiti' using washable/ clean-rinsing, theatrical black hairspray. His theory was that if he were caught, it would be a quick cleanup.After one of his more visible 'defacings', a predictable furor ensued- real paint was was donated to a cause to cover what they thought was damage. The artist became bored with the medium on moved on.

mattharvest:Monkeyhouse Zendo: mattharvest: He describes his own actions as an attempt to hurt the bank. Again, I'm not agreeing with the discretionary choice to prosecute him, but he fits the standards of the statute.

TFA:"I was encouraging folks to close their accounts at big Wall Street banks to transfer their money local nonprofit, community credit unions,"

I'm really having a problem with this idea that encouraging people to use an alternate service provider is "hurting" a multinational corporation. Maybe if people started listening to Olson it might reduce corporate revenue but lets not pretend that anyone is being physically harmed here.

Don't do a false equivalency: maliciousness doesn't require physical harm, but rather just harm. If you intend to harm someone's business, that's maliciousness (that's why we have a tort for interfering with someone's business). Moreover, the nature and content of his behavior indicate it was intended to harm them. Not physically injure anyone, but definitely to harm.

The 'winning' issue here is that this is simply silly, not that he doesn't fit the statute.

Tortious interference with contract. What contract was he interfering with?

TonyDanza:Monkeyhouse Zendo: Today I learned that attempting to reduce a corporation's profits by advocating that consumers use an alternate service provider is "hurting" that corporation. I guess Mitt was right: corporations are people too.

Today you learned that a corporation is made up of people? What did you think they were previously?

Is there some correlation between "damage" re: clean up costs and fine/jail time in this statute?

What justifies a reasonable damage estimate for cleaning up sidewalk chalk? Even if they can prove they paid someone 6K to clean up the mess, how does one demonstrate that level of clean up was unnecessary relative to the damage?

They could have cleaned it up by replacing several yards of concrete, would dude be on the hook for that amount too?

$6k to clean chalk off a sidewalk. And that was for what....paying a consultant to fly in and tell them to have the janitorial staff hose it down? Also, 13 years for scribbling on the sidewalk in chalk? $13k fine? What the fark? He should have straight up robbed the bank. He would have done less time.

This whole thing is farking retarded. Fine him for loitering and tell him to cut it out if you feel the need to do something. This is excessive.

Generation_D:1) It rains in San Diego about one month a year, so you guys saying just wait til it rains, thats east coast talk, useless in this context.

Then it wears off after people have been walking on it for a day or two. The point is, cleaning up is trivial. There's no reason not to let the guy who did it go out there himself and clean it up if he's willing to.

MechaPyx:$6k to clean chalk off a sidewalk. And that was for what....paying a consultant to fly in and tell them to have the janitorial staff hose it down? Also, 13 years for scribbling on the sidewalk in chalk? $13k fine? What the fark? He should have straight up robbed the bank. He would have done less time.

This whole thing is farking retarded. Fine him for loitering and tell him to cut it out if you feel the need to do something. This is excessive.

MechaPyx:$6k to clean chalk off a sidewalk. And that was for what....paying a consultant to fly in and tell them to have the janitorial staff hose it down? Also, 13 years for scribbling on the sidewalk in chalk? $13k fine? What the fark? He should have straight up robbed the bank. He would have done less time.

This whole thing is farking retarded. Fine him for loitering and tell him to cut it out if you feel the need to do something. This is excessive.

I guess you don't get it.

The things that you can't stop people from doing, carry the harshest punishments.

6655321:And truck to the site the special cleaning fluids and personnel to do the job.

Of course you also had to have special people in who were trained to use the equipment, make sure the public were safe whilst the chemicals were used and acquire any permits that using such chemicals would require. You'd also need to take samples of the material used to deface the building and test it to make sure it itself wasn't hazardous or would react badly to the specialist cleaning solutions being used.

Once you factor in that and the internal departments billing each other (+10% profit margin) the final bill only being $6k is actually remarkably cheap.

Sure you or I would just go out with a pressure washer or a bucket of water and be done in 30 seconds or so but then we aren't cleaning professionals and don't know what were doing are we? Hell if we'd of been let loose on that graffiti we could of ending up killing the whole done city/town with out buckets of water and washed away chalk!

Whoa whoa whoa wait just one second here"Surveillance pictures showed him writing on the sidewalks of banks using children's chalk to promote anti-big bank websites. "Sidewalks of banks?Pretty sure those are sidewalks of the people, and the banks do not own them.If they did, a slip and fall would find the bank being sued instead of the city as is often the case in NYC.What a bunch of assholes to write this as if the banks owned the sidewalks... oh wait, the banks and the media are mostly part of the same companies, of course they write it that way.

The actual fee to clean up the chalk on the sidewalk was only $50, the other $5950 were the fines from the California Coastal Commission because they allowed chalk water to drain into the storm drain and that chalk water somehow hurt some protected animal.

Walker:According to Olson, one of the banks -- Bank of America -- said it cost them $6,000 to clean up the chalk writing.

[media.tumblr.com image 193x135]

Well it's good to know they are spending our money wisely.

A reasonable business, when confronted by protestors, sucks it up and tries to work something out so they can go back to doing stuff. A place like BofA run by people that belong in jail, gets really pissy.